Effort to speed up fracking derailed

Friday

A last-minute legislative effort to speed up the state’s fracking timeline was derailed late Thursday after lawmakers couldn’t round up enough support for it in the House.

Throughout the day Thursday, the House kept on putting off a vote on the bill, eventually shelving the legislation when it became obvious it was too divisive. Rep. Mike Hager, a Rutherfordton Republican who shepherds energy bills in the House, said Senate Bill 127 was too controversial to push through in the waning days of the legislative session.

“We like for controversial legislation to go through the committee process,” Hager said. “I’m not going to hurry – we’ve been accused of that before.”

Some House members feared the measure reneges on a promise made in last year’s adoption of a state policy on shale gas exploration, a law written to provide maximum public protections and environmental safeguards.

Both Hager and Sen. Harry Brown, a Republican from Jacksonville, said the legislation is likely to be resurrected in the future when more time can be dedicated to it.

Brown said the Senate put off voting because of the House. “The House just needs a little more time to work on it,” he said.

The high-stakes fracking endgame that unfolded in Raleigh this week is reminiscent of last year’s late-night fracking debates, which resulted in a dramatic veto override after midnight by a single vote – with the deciding vote cast by accident.

Except the suspenseful decision this time ended up a strategic move not to put the bill to a vote.

“This was another cliffhanger this year, with big decisions about fracking made on the final night of the session,” said Molly Diggins, director of the Sierra Club’s N.C. operations. “The House has sided with the public interest in rejecting the Senate’s repeated efforts to push extreme proposals on fracking.”

The fracking provisions in Senate Bill 127, unknown to most House members just 36 hours earlier, were inserted into legislation that originally would reconfigure the N.C. Department of Commerce and had nothing to do with gas drilling.

Critics called it a roundabout way of lifting the state’s fracking moratorium by repealing the prohibition on permits. Hager contends that the legislation does not lift the moratorium. The bill would have also created a severance tax system that would tax oil and gas companies at a lower rate than many states, another attempt to encourage drilling activity here.

The last-minute legislative push for industry-friendly fracking policies represents the legislature’s third attempt this year to revise North Carolina’s one-year-old fracking law, which prohibits the issuance of drilling permits until rules are written and the legislature votes to approve those rules.

Earlier attempts included provisions to allow deep-well injections of fracking waste fluids, lifted the state’s fracking moratorium, and allowed energy companies to claim trade secret exemptions so as not to disclose certain chemicals used in fracking. All ran into resistance and failed.

The changes to last year’s law were sought by the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the agency that will regulate fracking in the state, in a bid to encourage energy companies to come to North Carolina, explore for natural gas and begin drilling.

However, a number of lawmakers are wary of changing the law that barely passed last year and is considered a pledge to protect the public from chemical spills, heavy truck traffic and other risks associated with shale gas exploration.

A key element of the 2012 law is its open-ended moratorium: The state can’t issue fracking permits until the N.C. Mining and Energy Commission writes 120-some rules to safely govern fracking and the legislature votes to approve those rules. Senate Bill 127 would have allowed permits to be issued as of mid-2015.

“I’d hate to throw in everything and the kitchen sink so late in the session,” Hager said. “It doesn’t speak well of transparency.”

While Hager said he guaranteed the House was not taking up fracking when it returns on Friday, Brown said the effort could be resurrected in a special session.

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